Question

Given the focus on Auto Layout in iOS 6, and the recommendation by Apple engineers (see WWDC 2012 videos) that we no longer manipulate a views’ frame directly, how would one go about avoiding the keyboard using only Auto Layout and NSLayoutConstraint?

Update

This looks like a reasonable solution: An example of keyboard sensitive layout (GitHub source) but one potential issue I see is what happens when a user rotates the device and the keyboard is already on screen?

Answer 1

My idea is to create a UIView, let’s call it keyboard view, and place it to your view controller’s view. Then observe keyboard frame change notifications UIKeyboardDidChangeFrameNotification and match the frame of the keyboard to the keyboard view (I recommend to animate the change). Observing this notification handles the rotation you mentioned and also moving keyboard on iPad.

Then simply create your constraints relative to this keyboard view. Don’t forget to add the constraint to their common superview.

To get the keyboard frame correctly translated and rotated to your view coordinates check out the docs for UIKeyboardFrameEndUserInfoKey.